Bollywood Turns to English

In 1994, when director Dev Benegal was working on his debut film, “English, August,” almost nobody in India made films in English. All the Indian distributors he approached rejected the film and it was only thanks to 20th Century Fox that it ran successfully in movie theaters.

In some ways, it was an early pioneer of the “multiplex films”—the fare offered at pricier cinemas with several screens that have cropped up in large Indian cities in the last decade. Many of these movies depict the urbane, English-speaking classes, and have come to define Bollywood today.

“‘English, August’ had to be in English,” said Mr. Benegal, whose film was an adaptation of a book about an alienated young civil servant in training in India’s boondocks. “It was a film about my generation, which was not only speaking in English but also thinking and dreaming in English.”

Seventeen years on, as the Aamir Khan-backed movie “Delhi Belly” prepares to hit theaters this Friday, the conversation about language continues. Mr. Khan, a megastar who has turned to producing, recently screened the movie in New York. He said the comedy about three flat-mates accidentally caught up in a crime was written and shot in English. But to make it accessible to an audience beyond multiplexes, he plans to release a dubbed Hindi version. He is also considering dubbing the movie in Tamil and Telugu.